While I see some fun applications for this (bumper cars, lawn mowers, office/industrial bots), the story also gives me hope for our future knowing that young men and women around the globe are exercising their imaginations, skills and abilities to do new, cool things. And, for those that didn't notice in the video, Curtis Boirum has already gone well beyond the original (1938) concept.

So many people still stuck in a twentieth century mindset. Outside of some real obsessive behavior (games, porn, gambling; already covered by 'obsessive/compulsive behavior'), this is how we stay connected to our digital world. We communicate with family, friends and people around the world, we conduct business, we participate in news and information sites, we are invited to join scientific research projects and the list goes on and on. 'Internet Addiction' is utter BS.

Before I go online every day, I run four to six miles. I've been a runner for over forty years. I know I have a problem but I just can't stop running.

...I actually thought the article was going to point out something the administration would do right, but it's just politics as usual. Same as jobs, education, health care and the wars. Spineless pussies!

I get the feeling Jitterbug is directed more at the non tech segment of the population regardless of age; the same people who couldn't, or wouldn't, set the time on a VCR with the instructions in their hand. Every generation has lots of folks who don't get tech or just don't care.

Didn't anything like that happen BEFORE there where video-games??? What was to blame then? TV? Books?

Yes! In the late '40s, I became a knife wielding assailant at the age of three or four with the encouragement of older neighborhood kids. Using a tiny folding knife which you could get in a penny gum-ball machine at the time, given me by the conspirators, I attacked the hood bully, stabbing him in the left biceps. I doubt I held anything that could be considered malice toward this individual and you'd probably have to chalk the attack up to peer pressure of sorts though I wasn't old enough to understand the concept. Got a stern talking to from Mom and Dad and was grounded for several days, as I recall. Imagine how knives in gum-ball machines would go over today.

Occasionally, I can barely contain my anger when an online journalist makes some statement that I know is incorrect, that I can prove wrong, yet, there is no feedback system. Big Internet media seems to allow feedback for a few select articles that are rarely of any great importance but articles of social, economic or political interest to us all offer none. I have actually found a few small newspapers that are more responsive to comments made online regarding articles printed in their paper.

About a year after Dr Carl Sagan's death, information circulated that he occasionally smoked a joint to relax. A well known, syndicated, southern journalist, whose name escapes me right now, wrote an opinion piece that was in my local newspaper along the lines of 'no wonder Dr Sagan was way out there and blah, blah, haha'. I suppose he found the whole thing pretty amusing. I wanted so badly to respond to this guy, remind him of Dr Sagan's achievements, accolades and honors, but there was absolutely no way to contact him and I sincerely doubt he would have cared anyway.

As more of us retired northerners move to SC, perhaps some day we can drop-kick these bible-thumping, redneck morons out of office.

But for now, the good-ol'-boy system is well entrenched here. And, based on recent past headlines, would anybody be especially surprised if this guy turned out to be one of the pedophiles he's so worried about?

As for me, I'm attracted to women in their late 50's, early 60's. Mmm, gray babes!

Sounds like he was trying to collect money he didn't deserve in the first place, assuming the clients of the fictitious Japanese company were also fictitious and he hadn't contacted the client that had supposedly agreed to pay his debt.

...next, classroom text publishers will demand that professors turn over their lecture material which, of course, is based on the book? Because, if a professors lectures are good enough, who needs the text?

Anecdotal, I know, but... An interest in reading is instilled in a child primarily by the parent and it has been my experience that once that interest is there, it remains unaffected by tv, Google or anything else. My parents regularly read to me and my wife and I read to our children and grand children from the time they were able to sit up. Our kids and grand kids were/are all 'gifted' honor students not because there was anything particularly special about them but because we took an active interest in their education.

The grand kids, 12-16 year-olds, enjoy reading books, watching movies on the tube, playing WoW and Halo, texting their friends (It has been demonstrated by many qualified people that there is absolutely nothing wrong with texting slang. All you pedantic pricks get offa my lawn) and Googleing for new books and free stuff by their favorite authors.

~Mike: "... what older folks claim.."? You need a quantifier in there. Something like 'some' or 'many'. We 'older folks' aren't all stuck in the '50s, or even the '40s. ;) By the way, I'm, "...will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64..." years old.